Gregory A. Clark: Critical thinking is the basis of science

Al Hartmann | The Salt Lake Tribune Eleventh graders make glass slides and count Paramecium through microscopes, part of a national science competition in biology class Wednesday October 26 at Salt Lake Center for Science Education. New test scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress show Utah students leading the nation in science. In one sense, we’re all natural-born scientists. Give a toddler an egg, and sooner or later, they’ll drop it, just to see what happens — as life and Neil deGrasse Tyson remind us.

So why do we need to teach scientific experimentation, as the new proposed Science with Engineering Education (SEEd) Standards would have us do? And what’s up with the…